Reforming the Built Environment: Artworks by Michael Jantzen

In this new series, American artist Michael Jantzen digitally distorts buildings and structures to create bizarre scenes.

“Reforming The Built Environment is a series of photomontages that present a surreal reinterpretation of known structures such as houses, churches, apartment buildings, and other conventional built forms, including furniture.

Photos of these things were taken in the real world with a digital camera. Those photos were then placed into a computer where they were isolated from their surroundings. The isolated images were then manipulated in various ways with the computer, in order to create completely new and unexpected versions of the original houses, churches, apartments, etc.

In most cases unaltered images of people (and sometimes animals) where added to the photomontages juxtaposed to the manipulated structures. This was done to heighten the surreal nature of the images, suggesting that the structures might actually be physically built.

My intent for this work as an artist is to explore ways in which the known world can be altered in order to expand its potentials in the minds of the viewers, allowing them to create their own personal stories about these new realities.”